Okay, I need my baseball bat here. The government is not, repeat not, projected to run a record deficit in 2009, contrary to what you might see in the NYT, USA Today and other less than reputable news sources. The latest projections show a deficit of $490 billion. By the absolutely meaningless measure of nominal dollars this is a record. But if anyone thinks this is giving information to readers, then they have no business writing news. The relevant measure is the deficit as a share of GDP. The 2009 deficit will be equal to about 3.3 percent of GDP. Even if you add in 1.3 percent of GDP for the money borrowed from Social Security this only gets you to 4.6 percent, well below the 6.0 percent deficit hit in 1983. To its credit, the USA Today piece included a chart that made this point, as did the last sentence in the article, but the headline writer blew it bigtime. [Add NPR to the villains list. They also reported a "record" deficit on morning edition.The Post too, althought deficit as a share of GDP did get in the article.]
--Dean Baker
